Page:Scribner's Magazine Volume 1.djvu/132

 Go down some spring afternoon to Washington Square. Sit on one of the benches, and after a half-hour, if you have not known it long ago, you will be convinced that you are in the only dignified spot in New York–the only place that seems to have the sanctity of age, the stateliness of permanency. The ample, red-brick houses, with their white doors, are ranged on the north side; at the east is the cool grayness of the University Building. In spite of its modern date, it looks mellow and weather-stained; at the spring season of which I speak an atmosphere of youthful green and freshness permeates the whole square, and seems by contrast to point its air of picturesque age.

The neighborhood below the square keeps the last-mentioned charm, but effectually loses all claim to freshness and dignity. A jumble of nationalities infest the shabby old houses that have known, unlike their occupants, better days. From the window of a room that I occupied–at a period which I may term my decadence–I had a full view of a row of these desecrated buildings. Red brick, three stories high, sometimes with the addition of a slanting roof and dormer windows; the upper windows with battered shutters, and dirty scraps of curtain fluttering disconsolately when a whiff of spring breeze loitered down the street. Usually a squalid man or woman lounged in these windows, in an immemorial attitude–an elbow on the sill, and the chin resting in the palm of one hand, looking out with careless stolidity. The lower floors were usually turned into third-rate restaurants or saloons, with brilliant signs above the windows in various languages. Opposite my lodgings was a little eating-house whose legend, emblazoned above the door, captivated my fancy–"Ladies and Gents Chop Palace."

The host of the Chop Palace was one Pierre Lepont, a stout Frenchman, who had inherited his restaurant and its sign from an American predecessor. He was the ideal of a bon bourgeois. I never looked at his broad, sallow face, radiating good humor, his well-balanced head, the curving, material sweetness of his lips, that I did not instantly become reconciled to life under its existing conditions. The impossible ceased to tantalize me; and the actual, no longer intolerable from its limitations, lay around me full of good, if I would but stretch out my hand and grasp it.

Next to this row of houses was an alley, whose dirt and poverty was to that of the street as a thousand is to one. By leaning out of my window I could catch a glimpse of the square–calmly beautiful and well ordered; sometimes irritating me by its contrast to my surroundings; sometimes consoling me with the thought that, at a moment's notice, I could escape to it. My lodging-house only boasted two stories; my landlady, a widow named Ellis, kept a flourishing bakery on the first floor, and lived in two rooms behind her shop. I occupied the front room up-stairs, and Pinsing, an old violinist, the back room. Pinsing was between fifty and sixty, tall, thin, and gray-haired, with a visionary, childlike look in his eyes. Sitting in my room, at my easel, I experienced a confusion of sensations. There arose from below whiffs of baking pastry and cake, and occasionally my landlady passed my door. I traced a vague analogy between her glossy brown hair and pink cheeks and the chocolate and strawberry iced cakes which graced her shop-window. All this suggested a sort of Mohammedan's paradise of houris and delicious eatables. From the adjoining room came the sound of Pinsing's violin, alloying the paradise with a musical Inferno. Between these two influences I found it hard to preserve an artistic equilibrium.

I dignify Pinsing with the name of violinist, but the fact that he possessed a violin and continually played upon it was his only claim to this title. I found that he was first violin in a small